Your Westmont Beloved Professor Speaks at Commencement

by Scott Craig, photos by Brad Elliott

About 332 graduates will participate in Commencement on Saturday, May 6, at 9:30 am on Thorrington Field with 149 graduating with honors. Westmont’s inaugural cohort of eight nursing students will attend the ceremony, marking the culmination of their 16-month education in the Westmont Downtown | Grotenhuis Nursing program. Also, 49 Golden Warriors who graduated in 1973 will march in the procession to celebrate their 50th reunion. The ceremony, which is closed to the general public, will be livestreamed at westmont.edu/commencement.

Beloved history professor Chandra Mallampalli, who is moving to Boston after teaching at Westmont for 22 years, delivers the address at Commencement.

Westmont President Gayle D. Beebe presents the Westmont Medal to alumnus Jonathan Walker (’91), cofounder and chief technology officer for AppFolio, which develops software for property managers.

Graduates Mercy Milliken and Tobi Oyebade will offer reflections. The graduating class includes veteran Frank Barela of Folsom, who served in the military before attending Westmont.

Westmont launched its Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing program in partnership with Cottage Health in 2020 amidst a global pandemic and a dire nursing shortage. Nursing graduates Laura Acevedo, Trisha Beaudin, Regino Gonzalez , Michaela Root , Gracie Stokes , Jen Velas , Megan Wahrenburg, and Anna Wallace will also celebrate at a separate pinning ceremony following Commencement in the Global Leadership Center.

Mallampalli, who has held the Fletcher Jones Foundation Chair of the Social Sciences since 2017, has written four books and many articles that examine the intersection of religion, law, and society in colonial India. His scholarship and teaching span the fields of modern India, British Empire, world history and global

Christianity. In 2021-22, he served as an inaugural Yang Visiting Scholar of World Christianity at Harvard Divinity School.

Walker took AppFolio public in 2015. The company employs nearly 2,000 people, including numerous Westmont graduates. Jon continues to drive AppFolio’s technology vision and architecture, leading key initiatives such as artificial intelligence. He holds and has contributed to multiple patents, and he helped develop software deployed to more than 20 million computers.

The Westmont Medal honors those whose lives embody the very principles associated with the character of the college. Past recipients include Steven and Denice Fellows, Ron Werft, Katherine Wiebe, Lindsay and Laurie Parton, Christine and Robert Emmons, David and Anna Grotenhuis, Lady Leslie Ridley-Tree, and Rolf Geyling, to name a few.

Soul Care Offered at Pastors Conference

Westmont College, which has worked to develop Christian ministers and leaders to serve in every sphere of society for 85 years, hosts a one-day conference dedicated to encouraging, refreshing, and supporting pastors. The event features speakers President Gayle D. Beebe, musician Steve Bell , poet Malcolm Guite, and Provost Kim Battle-Walters

Denu on Tuesday, May 30, at First Presbyterian Church, 21 E. Constance Ave, Santa Barbara.

“This is a day of soul care,” Beebe says. “Ministry can require not only a depth of spiritual training but an extraordinary variety of both administrative ability and leadership capacity.”

The conference costs $49 and includes attendance at the full LEAD Where You Stand Conference (regular ticket price is $299) on May 31-June 2 at Westmont’s Global Leadership Center. To help ministry teams attend together, every fifth group registrant is free. Register at westmont.edu/pastors-conference.

The 8th Annual LEAD Where You Stand Conference features David Brooks, New York Times columnist and bestselling author; Charity Dean, CEO and cofounder of the Public Health Company; Marcus “Goodie” Goodloe, MLK Jr. scholar, mentor, speaker and author; Erin Meyer, author of The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business; Jeff Schloss, T.B. Walker professor of natural and behavioral sciences, and director of the Center for Faith, Ethics, and Life Sciences; and Jonathan Walker, chief technology officer and founder of AppFolio.

“This extraordinary lineup of speakers will equip you with additional leadership insights and skills,” Beebe says.

Beebe, Westmont president since 2007, has spent more than a quarter century in higher education. He has authored or edited more than 40 articles and 10 books including, The Shaping of an Effective Leader: Eight Formative Principles of Leadership

Bell, a Canadian Christian songwriter and storyteller, has produced 20 solo CDs and won numerous music-industry awards, and authored a seven-book series, Pilgrim Year, about the spirituality of the Christian calendar year.

Guite, a singer-songwriter, Anglican priest and academic, serves as a Life Fellow and former Chaplain of Girton College (Cambridge).

Denu, Westmont provost and dean of the faculty, has more than a quarter century of experience in executive leadership in higher education.